Nant whisky founder's wife to be interviewed by ASIC over failed investment schemes

Investors spent tens of thousands on Nant whisky barrels, only to find many were never filled.

ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie

The wife of the bankrupt founder of the Nant whisky and angus cattle investment schemes will be interviewed by the corporate watchdog as part of an ongoing investigation into the saga, the ABC's Background Briefing has learned.

Key points:

Whisky and angus cattle investment schemes were based on a very similar model

Almost 900 investors paid up to $14,000 for a barrel of whisky

Margaret Batt, who replaced her husband Keith Batt as a director of various Nant businesses before he declared himself bankrupt in late 2015, was told on Tuesday that she would have to answer questions from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Brisbane.

It is understood that ASIC, which declined to comment, is trying to establish whether any alleged offences raised in complaints from angry investors potentially amount to breaches of the Corporations Act.

Almost 900 investors purchased barrels of whisky from Nant after commercial production began at a distillery in Bothwell, north of Hobart, in 2008.

The barrels, which cost up to $14,000 each, were stored on site in a bonded warehouse until the whisky contained within them reached maturity — a process that was expected to take four years.

In an era of low interest rates, Nant promised to then buy the barrels back from investors and reward them with a generous return of 9.55 per cent each year.

The angus cattle scheme was based on a very similar model. Investors paid $30,000 for a herd of 10 black breeding cows and were told they would receive the same return when they sold them back to Nant five years later.

"On the face of it, you couldn't think of a more diverse set of investments," said financial advisor and commentator Scott Pape, better known as The Barefoot Investor.

"You've got whisky, you've got farmland, you've got cows — come to think of it, I've pretty much described my old man's dream retirement but it was a nightmare for anyone that invested in this."

The first sign of trouble came in December, 2015, when the founder of the Nant businesses, Keith Batt, declared himself bankrupt, owing more than $16 million after a series of failed property ventures in Brisbane. He had earlier removed himself as a director of the Nant operation.

Then, in March this year, an audit of the whisky barrels stored on the Nant estate in Bothwell found more than 700 were apparently never filled, some were missing, and others had been secretly decanted, bottled, and sold to the public.

The audit was carried out by the publicly listed Australian Whisky Holdings, which initiated a takeover of Nant last October before subsequently abandoning the idea.

The company instead purchased only the Nant name and the distilling assets. It is continuing to produce whisky on the Bothwell estate.